News and Updates

More than 30,000 shared their work story

Researchers will have richer data to work with now that more than 30,000 provided their work story to the Ontario Health Study. A big thank you to those that took time to contribute to the Work History Questionnaire by December 1, 2019.

Here’s some of the early numbers:

67 – The percentage of participants that walked or biked while travelling in a given week

6 – The number of hours respondents spent sitting on the job in a day (median)

40 – The most number of jobs reported by a participant

65 – The percentage of those finishing the Work History Questionnaire who also provided an earlier blood sample

The OHS team will now take time to prepare and analyze the data from the questionnaire, in order to make it available to approved researchers later in 2020.

A Halifax researcher is already interested in the new OHS data. Dr. Ellen Sweeney is the Director of Strategic Research Initiatives for Atlantic PATH, a sister study to the OHS.

She said it would be very interesting to compare the occupational data collected from the Atlantic PATH study with those of the OHS Work History Questionnaire. “If there are similarities between our findings and the OHS, that strengthens the work overall. If there are differences, it’s important to look at them and see if there are other variables at play, either here or in Ontario, that are influencing the health of participants.”